billski
Active member
Here and there, by Inez Robb
SCHENECTADY GAZETTE, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1966
GAZETTE PHONE FR 4-4141
Ever since the Big Snow I have been thinking that if I were only 30 years younger and minus a husband, I would mush my way into a ski resort-shouting, "Excelsior!"
The mating dance of the whooping crane is neither as exotic nor as effective as that of the American young on the ski trail. I have this on the word of Hans Thorner, the famous Swiss-American ski master. He is also president and manager of Magic Mountain; a ski resort in Londonderry, Vt., whose trails seems to lead directly to the altar.
- * • * - * •
That's where the action is, and the boys, too, ripe for the plucking. There are winters when he isn't certain whether he is a Christy cupid of a ski swami. But he is certain that in June his mail is full of wedding invitations from young people who have met on Magic Mountain.
"You don't need an introduction on the trail," said Mr. Thorner, a man of firm opinions and many of them. "There is no easier place to meet the opposite sex. On skis one can display magnificently whatever he or she has to display. Skiing carries a built-in license for exhibitionism.
"Again, ski clothes today are very sexy. All that tight-fitting stuff! With the A m e r i c a n woman it is hard to tell whether skiing or ski clothes is the more important. "
Mr. Thorner abandoned the Alps for the U.S.A. in 1934, not the best year in American history for immigrants. However, skiing was just beginning to be a beam in the athletic American eye. He has seen the sport grow from nothing to something, and has instructed native skiers from Lake Placid to Mt. Rainier and back again. (He used to stop off in Hollywood where he skied in some major snow spectaculars for Paramount and RKO).You and I may think that skiing is a big sport in the U.S.A. today. But it Is still "small" to Mr. Thorner. Just in its infancy here, he insists.
In Europe there are all those mountains, Mr. Thorner explained. ""What can one do with "them, except ski? So everyone skis. That is not so here. Yet I cannot think of a nation where skiing is such a natural. It is a go-go-go sport, just like the American people.
In Europe a ski championship can be parlayed into a big job or hotter economic opportunity just as an American football star can get a better Job job or hotter economic opportunity just as an American football star can get a better Job in Wall Street or sign one of those big pro football contracts.
"Now I am not particularly athletic. But I wanted to hold up my end of the conversation at a luncheon for Mr. Thorner in New York just a few days before the big storm. So I asked if anyone had read Romain Gary’s “The Ski Bum”. Better I had dropped my ski poles! Mr. Thorner looked apoplectic, “That bum Is no skier! He's an idiot," the skier cried as if treacherously stabbed. "That book has nothing to do with skiing. And now the movies have bought It for a picture!
"There has never been a good piece of fiction on skiing or skiers, he continued. ""On the one hand, writers are not skiers. And, on the other, they probably feel the subject has no commercial value.
They write about golf, Mr. Thorner said scornfully. "Golf! It leaves me cold. Golfers are crazy. There may be skill involved in the game but it doesn't come under the real category of a sport. I can't identify with it. “
But skiing, he said, and a holy light gleamed in his bright blue eyes. "Skiing is in the heart. It is not how well you ski, but it."
*Yes," agreed a guest who had read up on the mystic of skiing. " It 's man against the mountain—"
Precisely, Mr. Thorner declared. "That Gary—no one has touched on the psyche of the skier who needs snow to make him happy. The greatest test or proof of the mental and physical skill of the individual is the mountain vs. the self and the skis."
* * *-
As the luncheon party broke up, Mr. Thorner looked wistfully into the then cloudless sky and said, "They have more snow in Europe. We have to hoard it on the slopes in this country."
SCHENECTADY GAZETTE, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1966
GAZETTE PHONE FR 4-4141
Ever since the Big Snow I have been thinking that if I were only 30 years younger and minus a husband, I would mush my way into a ski resort-shouting, "Excelsior!"
The mating dance of the whooping crane is neither as exotic nor as effective as that of the American young on the ski trail. I have this on the word of Hans Thorner, the famous Swiss-American ski master. He is also president and manager of Magic Mountain; a ski resort in Londonderry, Vt., whose trails seems to lead directly to the altar.
- * • * - * •
That's where the action is, and the boys, too, ripe for the plucking. There are winters when he isn't certain whether he is a Christy cupid of a ski swami. But he is certain that in June his mail is full of wedding invitations from young people who have met on Magic Mountain.
"You don't need an introduction on the trail," said Mr. Thorner, a man of firm opinions and many of them. "There is no easier place to meet the opposite sex. On skis one can display magnificently whatever he or she has to display. Skiing carries a built-in license for exhibitionism.
"Again, ski clothes today are very sexy. All that tight-fitting stuff! With the A m e r i c a n woman it is hard to tell whether skiing or ski clothes is the more important. "
Mr. Thorner abandoned the Alps for the U.S.A. in 1934, not the best year in American history for immigrants. However, skiing was just beginning to be a beam in the athletic American eye. He has seen the sport grow from nothing to something, and has instructed native skiers from Lake Placid to Mt. Rainier and back again. (He used to stop off in Hollywood where he skied in some major snow spectaculars for Paramount and RKO).You and I may think that skiing is a big sport in the U.S.A. today. But it Is still "small" to Mr. Thorner. Just in its infancy here, he insists.
In Europe there are all those mountains, Mr. Thorner explained. ""What can one do with "them, except ski? So everyone skis. That is not so here. Yet I cannot think of a nation where skiing is such a natural. It is a go-go-go sport, just like the American people.
In Europe a ski championship can be parlayed into a big job or hotter economic opportunity just as an American football star can get a better Job job or hotter economic opportunity just as an American football star can get a better Job in Wall Street or sign one of those big pro football contracts.
"Now I am not particularly athletic. But I wanted to hold up my end of the conversation at a luncheon for Mr. Thorner in New York just a few days before the big storm. So I asked if anyone had read Romain Gary’s “The Ski Bum”. Better I had dropped my ski poles! Mr. Thorner looked apoplectic, “That bum Is no skier! He's an idiot," the skier cried as if treacherously stabbed. "That book has nothing to do with skiing. And now the movies have bought It for a picture!
"There has never been a good piece of fiction on skiing or skiers, he continued. ""On the one hand, writers are not skiers. And, on the other, they probably feel the subject has no commercial value.
They write about golf, Mr. Thorner said scornfully. "Golf! It leaves me cold. Golfers are crazy. There may be skill involved in the game but it doesn't come under the real category of a sport. I can't identify with it. “
But skiing, he said, and a holy light gleamed in his bright blue eyes. "Skiing is in the heart. It is not how well you ski, but it."
*Yes," agreed a guest who had read up on the mystic of skiing. " It 's man against the mountain—"
Precisely, Mr. Thorner declared. "That Gary—no one has touched on the psyche of the skier who needs snow to make him happy. The greatest test or proof of the mental and physical skill of the individual is the mountain vs. the self and the skis."
* * *-
As the luncheon party broke up, Mr. Thorner looked wistfully into the then cloudless sky and said, "They have more snow in Europe. We have to hoard it on the slopes in this country."
